Compacting not working
I posted this a few weeks ago but I now have more information so will reword the question (and the original thread was lost).
I am being prompted to compact folders several times a day. Each time I am told that 26MB or more of disk space will be saved. Each time the amount shown as saved in the status bar at the end of the process is 26MB less than the prompt to compact.
I have narrowed down the problem to the 2017 local archive folder. If I right click on that folder and choose "Compact" the status bar displays "Compacting folder 2017" very briefly and then "Done compacting (approx. 26.0 MB saved)."
If I then navigate away to clear the message in the status bar and then reselect and do the same thing again, I get the same messages. Every time it says it is compacting, every time it says it has saved 26MB.
I've looked at the contents of the "2017" file with a text editor and there are deleted messages in it which are not removed by compacting. The first message in the file has an X-Mozilla-Status of "0009". I can't see any sign of corruption.
Has anyone come across this problem and/or know how to fix it? I don't really want to have to go through the file manually removing deleted messages.
I'm using Thunderbird 52.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.11.6
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First of all create a full backup of your Thunderbird profile. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile
Then follow the instructions from the article. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders#Compacting_does_not_seem_to_work
Thanks for the reply but unfortunately that doesn't work.
I'd already tried deleting the msf file (I should have mentioned that).
I don't know how long it was before I spotted the problem but I'd lose too many mails going back to a good backup (I don't know how far back a good backup would be but the problem is still there using a backup from a month ago.
I can think of a number of coauses, but few related to Thunderbird.
I suggest you start by running a chkdsk on the volume to determine if the actual files are correctly allocated. a silent failure to replace the original file with the new is not expected. but if there are allocation issues then that might explain it.
Do you have nstmp folders appearing in the all folders view of folders?
Next I suggest you disable any anti virus you may have installed, They can interfere with the opening and deleting of files.
chkdsk is a Windows tool, I am using OS X. However, I have gone through steps checking for disk errors and file permissions. No problems were found.
There were no nsmtp folders.
I decided to go down the manual route and used a text editor to remove the offending mails. There weren't as many marked as deleted as I thought so it didn't take too long.
After starting Thunderbird to rebuild the index and reapplying all the tags I tested by archiving a few unneeded mails, deleting them from the local folders and compacting. The compacting seems to have been successful so it looks as if the problem has been resolved. I think it's unlikely I'll find the cause now (I'm not going to spend any more time on it) but will keep an eye on compacting over the next few weeks to make sure.